Creative writing lessons: Creative Writing tips, advice and lessons from bestseller Stephen King

Creative writing lessons: Creative Writing tips, advice and lessons from bestseller Stephen King

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This video is a montage of advice, tips and lessons from Stephen King, one of my favourite writers. He's a bestselling author and a true talent in horror, and more recently, crime, science fiction and literary fiction.

Stephen King talks here about character, plot, notebooks, ideas, process and all sorts of things. He gives some brilliant advice that is perhaps slightly different to what you might hear elsewhere.

I put this together to help people with their creative writing, to inspire different ways of planning, development. drafting and editing. Also for inspiration and to give us all something to aspire to. This is perfect for beginners to creative writing, those looking for help via lessons or lectures.

So sit back and listen to the wonderful, refreshing and amazing Stephen King.

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Videos with hints and tips for aspiring writers by Nicola Valentine
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Closed Caption:

I method for starting anything as I tell
myself the story when I'm laying in bed
at night before I go to sleep
I'll tell myself this story and so at
some point probably nine months after
this because this is what it's like you
know a little piece of grit and it makes
a pearl after a while you just have to
give it time
and if it doesn't have a dozen but a lot
of times it does
but people say do you keep a notebook
and the answer is I think the writers
notebook is the best way in the world to
immortalize bad ideas
my idea about a good idea is one that
sticks around and sticks around and
sticks around it's like to me it's like
if you were to put bread crumbs in a
strainer and shake it which is what the
passage of time is for me it's like
shaking a strainer all this stuff that's
not very big and not very important just
kind of dissolves and falls out
but the good stuff stays you know the
big pieces stay
I had the idea for under the dome when i
was teaching high school back in 1973
and it was just too big for me and I was
too young for it and i wrote about 25 26
pages and put it away
this is seen at the beginning of this
book where this would shut gets cut in
half when this dome comes down over this
town
I had written that part when I was in in
my early twenties and just sort of
recreated it from memory
when I when I wrote the book so the good
stuff stays
the only thing you can do is you use
your best judgment
you know and I want to tell stories but
i love the language I always have
I'm i fell in love with with books with
novels
when I was a young guy and I fell in
love with poetry when I was in college
people like Richard Wilbur hart crane
Ezra Pound TS Eliot I'll do these guys
the the quality of the language being
like something that you could eat with a
spoon and I don't aspire to be a miracle
I don't want to do that but i want to
write as well as I possibly can
I don't want to get diarrhea of the
mouth I want to keep the story
rolling but I want to do it as elegantly
as i can i think that readers sort of
expect that
so the and then when the thing is done
you give it to people and particularly
an editor and what one of the things I'm
ass sometimes about editing the more
successful that you get the more
important it is to listen to an editor
who won't let you hang yourself in Times
Square
so I try to do that and I remember what
Hemingway said you must kill your
darlings
well that seems a little bit harsh I not
able to kill all my darlings but i do
some next
but anyway I
as I didn't know any better and and I
got it out in the spring when the snow
was gone from Maine and and I started it
up and adjust impossible right
just wasn't running right and somebody
told me
well you go on up to this guy's farm
he's got a you probably know where this
is going
hey he said go on up this guy's got a
little garage adjacent to his farm and
he's got this unique way of doing things
he tells you what it's going to cost and
that's what it costs
so I went up and about half way to this
farm which was way out in east overshoot
the the motor started to skip and by the
time I got to the farm
it was barely running at all and it died
as i pulled into the into the guys
dooryard that's what we call my main
door yard
so I'm on my motorcycle and the
motorcycle is did
and from this garage came the biggest
goddamn Saint Bernard you ever saw in
your life and the guy came out the
mechanic came out and the dogs going
it's got that stuff coming out of his
eyes you know the way that st. Bernard's
do and he said don't worry Buster is
very friendly and buster weighed about
250 pounds and so I walked over toward
Buster and his haunches just sort of
coiled down and his teeth came out and
he actually started to go for me and the
guy brought a socket wrench down on his
hind end and the dog SAT still and i
thought i might get an apology but the
guy looked at me and just said Buster
must not unlike your face so he fixed my
motorcycle and i wrote a book called
Cujo and and it worked out
and sometimes so sometimes it does it
does work out sometimes it works out but
it doesn't work out the way you think
it's gonna work out
I wrote a book called The Shining and
Jesus this is like being led zeppelin
bag together
play on the hit something that's kind of
cool you know you sit in a room and you
write stories and everything and then
you come out here and people have
actually read the stories
let's see it's morning that's good
so anyway I thought when I wrote The
Shining i said i was wonderful idea
about this family and this haunted hotel
and what they really wanted to the boy
with psychic powers and at the end of
the book the hotel will kind of absorb
him and then we'll see the next year
will see the whole family is ghost but
it didn't turn out that way
I I feel like you have to follow the
characters and you have to follow the
story where it needs and the last thing
that I want to do is to spoil a book
with plot so i think i think the plot
what plot is the last resort of bad
writers as a rule
I'm a lot more interested in character
and situation and you follow where it
goes and you know I got a lot of letters
after Cujo because the little boy died
at the end
10 his name was ted and he died of heat
heat prostration in the car and I got a
lot of letters saying how could you kill
that little kid prep parenthetically I
got a lot more letters about Greg
Stillson kicking a dog to death in the
dead zone
people care about dogs in a way they
don't about kids it's it's weird but
there it is
hey I don't make the news I just
reported you know I'm saying
so anyway I had no idea that Ted was
going to die and i had no idea that
Danny and his mother were going to live
but I was really glad when they did